Things They Carried
The Things They Carried Report
“The Things They Carried” was a story about soldiers caught in the confusion of the Vietnam War. There are a lot of apparent themes that are dealt with when writing a story about war, especially about death. I enjoyed reading this story; however there were some things about it that I was concerned about. I would like to discuss the author’s style of writing, his meaning of the title “The Things They Carried” and the way the author and his characters deal with death. This story was written with a variety of styles, and it was in a non-traditional format. The main style seems to be a third person, limited omniscient story. However, this story also includes elements of flashback. In a traditional flashback however, the character having the flashback usually is telling the story, the flashback or past events is told only once, and then we view the character or characters revelations afterwards. This story breaks all of the rules of the traditional flashback. In the story, a comrade dies, Ted Lavender. The event of his death is retold 4 or 5 times within the story, from all different angles. For some readers who read this for the first time, especially myself, this was very confusing. It’s almost as if the story is being told as a movie, where we are supposed to have some visual reference as to where we are in the story.
Another element that was confusing is that if the reader has no knowledge of famous or foreign wars, the reader would not know that this is set in the Vietnam War. The word Vietnam is not mentioned until later on in the story. This story could have easily been set in WWII, since this war did deal with some of the Far East countries. The story did have a ‘modern’ feel to it, so I believed that it was the Vietnam War. Finally, the author used vulgar words in the story. I believe that you take a serious risk when you write literature with swear words, because then you separate most of your audience. Either your audience is
“The Things They Carried” was a story about soldiers caught in the confusion of the Vietnam War. There are a lot of apparent themes that are dealt with when writing a story about war, especially about death. I enjoyed reading this story; however there were some things about it that I was concerned about. I would like to discuss the author’s style of writing, his meaning of the title “The Things They Carried” and the way the author and his characters deal with death. This story was written with a variety of styles, and it was in a non-traditional format. The main style seems to be a third person, limited omniscient story. However, this story also includes elements of flashback. In a traditional flashback however, the character having the flashback usually is telling the story, the flashback or past events is told only once, and then we view the character or characters revelations afterwards. This story breaks all of the rules of the traditional flashback. In the story, a comrade dies, Ted Lavender. The event of his death is retold 4 or 5 times within the story, from all different angles. For some readers who read this for the first time, especially myself, this was very confusing. It’s almost as if the story is being told as a movie, where we are supposed to have some visual reference as to where we are in the story.
Another element that was confusing is that if the reader has no knowledge of famous or foreign wars, the reader would not know that this is set in the Vietnam War. The word Vietnam is not mentioned until later on in the story. This story could have easily been set in WWII, since this war did deal with some of the Far East countries. The story did have a ‘modern’ feel to it, so I believed that it was the Vietnam War. Finally, the author used vulgar words in the story. I believe that you take a serious risk when you write literature with swear words, because then you separate most of your audience. Either your audience is